At 8:24 p.m. EST, flight 214 departed for Philadelphia with 73 passengers and 8 crew members on board. Because of high winds in the area, the crew chose to wait in a holding pattern with five other airplanes rather than attempt to land in Philadelphia.[3]

At 8:58 p.m. EST, while in the holding pattern, the aircraft was hit by lightning, which ignited fuel vapors in the No. 1 (left) reserve tank, causing an explosion that blew apart the outer portion of the jetliner's port wing. The crew of flight 214 managed to transmit a final message – "Mayday, mayday, mayday ... Clipper 214 out of control ... here we go" – before it crashed near Elkton, Maryland. All 81 people on board were killed.[4]

On December 17, 1963, nine days after the crash of flight 214, Leon H. Tanguay, director of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) Bureau of Safety, sent a letter to the FAA recommending several safety modifications as part of future aircraft design. One modification related specifically to volatile fuel vapors that can form inside of partly empty fuel tanks, which may be ignited by various potential ignition sources and cause an explosion. Mr Tanguay's letter suggested reducing the volatility of the fuel/air gas mixture by introducing an inert gas, or by using air circulation.[1] Thirty-three years later[nb 3] a similar recommendation was issued by the NTSB (the CAB Bureau of Safety's successor) after the TWA Flight 800Boeing 747 crash on July 17, 1996, with 230 fatalities, which was also determined to have been caused by the explosion of a volatile mixture inside a fuel tank.[5]

^In 1971, LANSA Flight 508 was also brought down by a lightning strike. However, though this crash would have more total casualties (91 fatalities), up to fourteen passengers survived the crash but perished waiting for help in the Peruvian jungle.

^The full TWA 800 National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report was issued in 2000, but a safety recommendation regarding fuel vapor inerting was sent to the FAA on December 13, 1996, according to the NTSB report